An attack on two Minnesota state legislators cost the life of former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, Democrat Melissa Hortman, and her husband; a man set fire to the home of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, while he was sleeping; two employees of the Israeli Embassy were shot and killed in Washington; a Molotov bomb attack left eight injured during a march in Colorado calling for the release of Israeli hostages; a Tesla Cybertruck exploded — with the driver inside — at the entrance of a Trump hotel in Las Vegas. These are just incidents from 2025, but the year before, President Donald Trump was the target of two assassination attempts on the campaign trail. Political violence in the United States, which at first might bring to mind 1963 and John F. Kennedy riding in a limousine in Dallas, is now a terrifying reality for the entire national political class.

The Department of Homeland Security identified political violence as one of its top concerns for 2025 last year. And a Reuters investigation, which began after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, concluded that the current rise in political violence is the highest since the 1970s.

Just a week after the attack that claimed Congresswoman Hortman’s life in Minnesota, three states have announced the arrest of several individuals for threats against politicians. The country is on alert, and only now — when political violence has become commonplace — are answers beginning to be sought in a nation as polarized as it is divided.

That January 6, 2021, is a good place to start. One of Trump’s first actions as president was to pardon the more than 1,500 individuals prosecuted for the assault on the Capitol. It was his way of honoring what has gone down in history as one of the darkest days for U.S. democracy — an event he described as an act “of love and peace.” That Wednesday in January, thousands of Trump supporters, incited by his calls for insurrection and false claims of election fraud, stormed the Capitol in a violent attack that lasted for hours and left five people dead. Trump’s pardon, four years later, of those convicted or charged, sent a clear message to extremists: violence is acceptable if you’re on the right side of history — his side.

The activity of ideological groups prone to violence, such as militias and neo-Nazi organizations, had been declining for years, according to the Princeton University study Key Political Violence and Resilience Trends From 2024. But the reports warns that that has now changed: “The pardons signal a return to the more permissive environment established during President Trump’s first term.”

That was the beginning of a presidency that, with near-militaristic rhetoric, identified two clear internal enemies. The Democrats, whom Trump has labeled “evil” and “dangerous”: “they’re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they’re sick.” And undocumented immigrants, whom he baselessly claims are “dangerous criminals.” Yet in a political climate that at times borders on the hysterical, threats and attacks on politicians are emerging from both sides of the ideological divide.

Putting a face to a supposed enemy fuels the actions of so-called vigilantes. “That’s really the kind of language that can make it seem like someone feels like they have to take action, they’re compelled to take what they think is heroic action or patriotic action,” said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University, in during a PBS panel discussion. The most high-profile vigilante is Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering Brian Thompson, CEO of the health insurance company UnitedHealthcare Group, last year in New York.

The Princeton report, however, identifies Black, Jewish, Arab, Muslim, and LGBTQ+ communities as the main targets of vigilantes and warns that in 2025, anti-immigrant rhetoric could lead to an increase in attacks against the Latino community. Wendy Via, president and founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), told EL PAÍS that “the rise in political violence is fueled by the dehumanizing and, at times, violent rhetoric of our elected leaders and other politically powerful actors.” She warned: “The constant vitriol puts entire communities, our nation, and our democracy at risk.”

The risk at the local political level

Beyond Trump and far from the Capitol, there are more than 7,000 public legislators across the 50 states living in fear. “I don’t want to think that I have to a personal security detail everywhere I go, but I think we really have to look at the situation that we’re in,” said Minnesota Democratic Senator Tina Smith last week. Data from the Princeton report recorded more than 600 incidents of threats and harassment against local officials nationwide in 2024, representing a 10% increase compared to 2023. The number of cases is expected to rise this year. Fellow Minnesota legislator Amy Klobuchar summed up the situation: “This is a very bad environment, and we need to bring the tone down.”

The tone escalated rapidly during the presidential campaign. Among all the moments sparked by Elon Musk’s brief and scandalous political adventure, one episode last September forced him to do something he rarely does: backtrack. A second assassination attempt on Donald Trump had just been revealed, this one at his golf course in Florida. The country was still reeling from the gunshot that grazed Trump’s ear a few months earlier during a rally.

In his personal campaign to cozy up to the Republican, Musk posted on social media: “No one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala” The backlash forced him to delete the post and offer something resembling an apology. But it didn’t last. Months later, he again claimed it would be “pointless” to assassinate Harris because they’d “just get another puppet” to replace her.

The incendiary language — of which Musk is a master — spreads from the heated rhetoric of rallies and White House briefings, echoing across social media, television, and every outlet where information and disinformation collide. The clearest case came during a campaign stop in Springfield, Ohio, where a false claim spread by Trump — that “Haitians are eating our pets” — unleashed a wave of threats against the city.

Even before the two assassination attempts on the president during the campaign, 45% of Americans considered political violence a major problem for the country, and 66% felt it was on the rise, according to a report by the States United Democracy Center published in August 2024. Two years earlier, a man had planned to attack then-speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi with a hammer, but ended up striking and injuring her husband.

The United States has a long and grim history of political violence since its founding. Four of its 46 presidents have been assassinated — Lincoln (1865), Garfield (1881), McKinley (1901), and Kennedy (1963) — but now the paranoia is spreading to every corner of the country. The “us versus them” narrative has become a constant feature of the political landscape. Just days apart, California Senator Alex Padilla was handcuffed after interrupting a press conference held by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in Los Angeles, and Democratic candidate for New York City mayor Brad Lander was arrested in an immigration court in Manhattan for trying to defend an immigrant.

When that bullet grazed Trump’s ear last summer, the now-president raised his fist and delivered a phrase for the history books: “Fight, fight, fight!”

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